Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:

The Human Condition.

Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society

Genevieve Lloyd has edited a comprehensive collection of learned critical discussions of Spinoza's philosophy, covering the intellectual context in which he worked and the influence of his thought, as well as the published works.

The political writings

We argue for a new theoretical perspective on representations. This perspective has its roots in recent scholarship in social studies of science and technology and is centered around the notion of inscriptions, graphical representations recorded in and available through some medium (e.g., paper, computer monitor). Methodologically, researchers have begun to investigate the construction and development of inscriptions, the transformations they undergo, the roles they play in social situations, and the (rhetorical) purposes for which they are deployed. As a result of this research, the social practices of inscription users came into focus, and individual mental activity was deemphasized. Inscriptions and inscription-related practices highlight aspects of representations and representing not captured by other theoretical frameworks. This framework has considerable implications for thinking about representations and representing, organizing classroom learning environments, and designing curriculum materials.

Inscriptions: Toward a Theory of Representing as Social Practice

Introduction: on studying stories of peoplehood Part I. Explaining the Political Role of Stories of Peoplehood: 1. Elements of a theory of people-making 2. The role of ethically constitutive stories Part II. Constructing Political Peoplehood in Morally Defensible Ways: 3. Ethically constitutive stories and norms of allegiance 4. A pioneering people.

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Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership

Méditations pascaliennes: The Skholè and Democracy

Foucault’s critique of early modern political theory aimed at displacing sovereignty as the principle of intelligibility of power. In the genealogical literature since Foucault, sovereignty has become a residual category lacking analytic specificity, largely displaced by governance, in turn equated with politics. We argue that Foucault and the Foucauldians have not understood that the flourishing of governance has presupposed a symbolic regime with a division of knowledge-power-law characteristic of the democratic sovereign. The conflation of governance with politics, together with the sliding of sovereignty under governance, has left Foucauldians unable to diagnose the dangers present in varying possible sovereignty-governance configurations.

Politics and Sovereign Power Considerations on Foucault

Society, Theory and the French Revolution

Examinant les origines revolutionnaires de la nation francaise moderne, l'A. repere une certaine complicite entre les concepts de nation culturelle et nation contractualiste. Defini comme la tentative de stabiliser le regime post-revolutionnaire en depolitisant l'idee de nation, le discours culturel est marque par la decouverte d'une societe nationale distincte des institutions politiques democratiques

Cultural versus contractual nations : Rethinking their opposition

This article seeks to examine the ‘birth of the social’ in the 18th century through an examination and comparison of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The underlying claimis that the emergence of a specifically social theory entailed a separation from political theory, as the uncovering of the limits of the ‘science of the statesman or legislator’. Emphasis is placed on the different ‘epistemological moves’, relative to the two texts, that rendered such a separation possible. In the case of Montesquieu, the terms of the social and political are separated, even opposed, but also articulated in their difference. By contrast, in Adam Smith the uncovering of a social bond tends towards a displacement of the ‘political’. The article concludes by suggesting why, in both cases, the discovery of the social remain edcuriously still-born.

Brian C. J. Singer

Papers

Méditations pascaliennes: The Skholè and Democracy

Politics and Sovereign Power Considerations on Foucault

Society, Theory and the French Revolution

Cultural versus contractual nations : Rethinking their opposition

Montesquieu, Adam Smith and the Discovery of the Social